


just, this is the way things go

by engistial



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:17:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engistial/pseuds/engistial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>title pretty much says it all; Derek/Stiles focused</p>
            </blockquote>





	just, this is the way things go

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this not long after watching the last episode but well before the second season's trailer came out. So it's not second season teaser compliant.
> 
> I don't even know what to call this, since it's less story more me talking through what I want to happen. I also am no good at ratings; does suggestive language qualify something for a teen and up rating? *supershrug*
> 
> Very not beta'd.

After Peter is killed and Derek becomes Alpha, things quiet down. They don’t calm down but it does get quiet. The Argents retreat, licking their wounds and trying to decide what their next step is, Kate betraying their core value rocked them but then to have Peter Hale kill her… Well, they have a lot to think about.

Derek scares the shit out of Jackson but the bite is a gift and he hadn’t earned it at that point so that’s all he does sending the kid running and stumbling and cursing and maybe even crying a little, manly tears of rage of course.

Lydia stays comatose until the next full moon and at first no one thinks anything’s different but it doesn’t take long before it’s transparent that something’s changed. And she’s something a little different from a werewolf, a little more and a little less, but she’s still pack.

Scott’s upset about being deprived of the cure until he finds out Derek made it all up, then he’s upset about being a sucker. He still needs Derek though, still doesn’t have control over his wolf, so through a combination of Allison and Stiles – mostly Stiles doing major shit behind the scenes and Allison using the influence she knows she has – they get Derek and Scott working together again.

Jackson still wants the bite and with Lydia being this unknown entity that seems to disappear and reappear at will and despite everything that happened between them she’s the closest person he has next to Danny. So, through her and one way or the other he gets turned. He sucks just as bad as Scott at first, except rather than sucking through trying to pretend nothing’s different he sucks because he thinks he knows how to handle it, but then something goes wrong, he almost gets Danny killed, and it’s suddenly clear exactly how little control he has so finally, finally he starts to pay attention. Once he does, he’s next to Scott and sometimes, often, almost always, a step or three ahead despite Scott having months and months on him.

While Stiles, well he’s just there, everywhere – running interference when Scott and Derek butt heads, distracting his dad when he needs to and helping him when he can, soothing Lydia when she approaches breakdown, helping her and Derek figure out what she can and can not do and maybe that what she is, is a more condensed version of herself, that she’s been distilled and distilled again, rather than catalyzed into the monster she thinks she’s become. He covers for both Scott and Jackson when Coach starts screaming about team ethics and missing practice and benches and things that they all know he’ll never do since Jackson and Scott, despite the occasional fireworks on the field, are the reason they make it into the finals year and year again. Once, he even started a really awkward conversation with Allison’s parents for reasons he will never talk about but in the service of a friend and man does that friend owe him fries for every meal for every day until the day they die. So Stiles is the solid support, the reason the pack works as well as it does, and some days that seems like not at all but there are days when they’re in the fields around the Hale house, playing tag or hide-and-seek or some ridiculously childish game that somehow has made the gears in Scott’s head click and he works with the wolf instead of fighting it, and those are the days when you can actually see Derek smiling. Stiles brought it up once, mentioned how Derek actually looked happy, and he’d meant it in a pleased, teasing way but the glare he’d gotten had jumped right over the low-level arousal inducing dark glare that was his usual fare and straight into SHIT SHIT DON’T EAT ME! So, from then on, whenever Stiles saw the relaxed jaw and curved lips, he kept it to himself, putting those memories beside the tiny pile of Lydia’s compliments – yes, even the back-handed ones because without them there’d only be like three – and the moments she’d looked vulnerable, not because it’d made him feel manly and protective but because those were the moments she’d let him see her, let down her walls and allowed him a step further than probably anyone else in the world had ever been or bothered to be. And after actually working with her, interacting and helping her work through this scary shit that was now her life, that burning passion he’d held has dimmed. He still loves her, there’s just too much power and passion and vibrant red-hair for him to do anything but love her, but it’s below the surface, quiet, and as time passes he comes to realize he doesn’t want her any more, doesn’t want her touch or her kiss, just her respect and, magically, it seems like he has that. She can still be a bitch, but he gets it, gets her, so it rolls off him the way it never did before and he’s content and confident, even in the face of one of her epic rages ‘cause he knows what to do, can handle this. But Derek, Derek still can blindside him, still makes him a little nervous. So, he keeps Derek’s smiles, the moments of quiet, intimate as a touch, where they had just existed in each other’s space and Stiles had felt calm like he hadn’t felt since his mother had been alive, he keeps those like treasures in a pile beside the Lydia pile and it’s not long before Derek’s pile is catching up to Lydia’s and by the time they graduate, throw their hats into the sky, a little full moon hanging from Scott’s tassel, like a joke but really not at all, the piles are even and as he watches his hat disappear among the dozens of others clouding the sky his breath catches in his throat because at the end of the summer he’ll be leaving and that pile may never grow again, well, won’t be growing at the rate it had been and he knows that isn’t what he wants. 

They’re at the school’s grad night, trapped in the gym and fenced into the courtyard, activity booths clogging the spaces until Stiles can’t even recognize that he’s still at school - the school’s method of keeping new grads off the road and alive long enough to enjoy the diploma they’ll be getting in the mail in 3 to 7 weeks - and Stiles has glitter and Halloween color hair-spray spiking the short fuzz on his head, a fake wolf tattoo on his bicep, and he’s laughing at Allison handing Scott’s ass to him in pillow jousting, he’s laughing hard enough, long past Scott yielding to Allison’s superior skills, that Lydia asks him if he’s okay, and is he crying? And Stiles just continues laughing, wiping the moisture away and unable to stop, he’d be embarrassed at the hiccupping laughter if he hadn’t seen the tears in Lydia’s eyes when she’d given her valedictorian speech, seen her fixing her makeup when he’d walked up to accept the placeholder piece of paper like it was actually his diploma, could even now see the smudged eyeliner she hadn’t been able to quite fix to perfection, he’d be embarrassed about Scott and Allison and Jackson bearing witness to this minor of break downs if he didn’t know they were all going through their own version of the same. The pack’s breaking apart, they’ll always be pack Derek has said so and Stiles doesn’t think he’d lie about that but Lydia’s going to Stanford on some ridiculous full-ride-plus scholarship, Allison and Scott are going to the CSU a half hour’s drive down the freeway, Jackson got into USC like the tool he is, and Stiles is heading to Berkeley, not quite a full-ride but enough that his dad will actually be able to afford it. Things are changing and Stiles doesn’t know if he’s ready for that, knows that he’s not.

They’re let free at 7am, their parents lined up at the front of the school to pick up the zombified high school graduates and Stiles’ dad is there, just got off his shift actually so neither of them really should be trusted with driving but he accepts the hug and the arm around his shoulders after waving good-bye to Scott, Allison, Lydia, Jackson, and Danny with promises of lunches and hangouts and lets his dad steer him to the passenger seat of the cruiser, seconds away from belting him in like he was still seven years old and unable to concentrate long enough to pull the belt around and buckle it himself. It renews the choke in his throat, he can feel his heart pressing into his mouth, but he’s cried way too much already, he still has testicles last time he checked damn it - and yes he’s had both Lydia and Allison chastise him for that line of thinking time and again but the point remains the same - so he fights it down, batting his dad’s hands away, and buckles himself in before resting his forehead against the cool glass of the passenger door. He must’ve fallen asleep because it’s seconds later and his dad is jostling him to get up, out and into bed. Which he does, stumbles into his room and falls face first, clothes and glitter and all, onto his comforter, not enough energy to pull back the sheets and actually get in and he hears his dad in the bathroom before he too heads to his own room to sleep away another long night of patrols and the constant low-level worry. And Stiles knows he should be sleeping, wants to, needs to, but he’s suddenly wired, restless energy thrumming through him and after twenty minutes of flopping about he gives in. He hopes he didn’t run any stop signs because he doesn’t think he’d hear an ambulance right now let alone recognize a red octagon as something other than a place marker on the way to his destination. 

The look Derek gives him is unreadable and he doesn’t say anything, just steps aside and lets Stiles in, closing the door behind him. Stiles is babbling and if you held a gun to his father’s head he wouldn’t have been able to tell you a single word that tumbled out of his mouth so he’s pretty sure he’s dreaming when Derek tugs him to the one completely renovated room in the entire house - Derek can handle being wet but no one likes the smell of wet dog - pushes Stiles onto the bed that’s just a mattress on the floor, removes his shoes, shoves him to face the wall, covers him with a blanket, and then climbs onto the bed behind him, curving up against him, blanket and clothing separating them, and pulls him tight against his chest. “Sleep, Stiles.” And he does.

The summer goes quickly and for all Stiles wants to talk, wants to understand what happened, he never brings it up, just sometimes he shows up, stays the night and the cycle repeats, nothing more nothing less even when the nights are unbearably hot. He doesn’t do it often, just when he starts thinking he made it all up he’ll find himself at Derek’s door and Derek will let him in. They don’t talk about it, there’s nothing to say, he’s leaving for Berkeley in mid August and Derek’s enrolled in the CSU with Scott and Allison, Scott still not quite ready to be on his own and Derek not quite willing to leave his home any time soon but wanting to finish off a degree he’d gotten halfway through when everything had gone down, when his life had been turned on its head for the second time in his short life. And, honestly, the cuddling thing isn’t really all that scandalous. Movie nights and a lack of significant furniture usually lead to cuddle puddles on the floor in front of the TV or a late training session will leave them lying in sweet summer grass, staring at the stars, heads on bellies, thighs against arms, feet twiddling ears, talking too loud and laughing too long. It was just, it was usually all of them, not just Stiles and just Derek, separated by a single sheet, chest against back and an arm warm and firm curled around his waist, hand like a brand on his chest or belly. He shouldn’t have been able to sleep, sweat trickling down his back from a combination of California summer and Derek Hale, it should’ve been gross and uncomfortable, but on those nights he didn’t twitch for twenty minutes, didn’t have his mind run on for thirty more before sleep claimed him, on those nights he’d nod off within minutes, Derek’s steady breaths tickling the hair on his neck and the slow thud of his heart against his back lulling him into oblivion. So the pole-axed look Derek is giving him when he shows up Friday night of a three-day weekend in November is actually really funny, Derek should’ve realized, should’ve understood. The Derek pile and Lydia pile of treasured moments in his mind are about the same size but Derek still makes him nervous and where he doesn’t want Lydia’s touch or Lydia’s kiss, he does want Derek’s and he feels like he kinda knows Derek after everything they’ve been through, is willing to chance that this thing wasn’t just Derek giving Stiles what he needed but also taking a little of what he wanted. When Derek doesn’t push him away, lips warm and soft against lips, in fact makes a deep rumble of a moan and draws him closer when Stiles gathers the courage, runs the tip of his tongue along the seam of his lips, Stiles thinks, yeah, this’ll work.

It’s after that that things start smoothing out, things go from hellish and depressing to fuck it all this is going to work. Everyone makes the effort, returns once a month, usually around the full moon because that just makes sense and during the few months apart Lydia and Jackson will never admit it but Stiles can tell from Jackson’s comparatively mild level of douchebaggery and the curve of Lydia’s shoulders when he picks her up for that first drive back to Beacon Hills that the last few full moons had been hard on them. And they fall into a routine, living their lives where and when they can but always circling back to Beacon Hills, back to pack, back to this little family they created by accident. And that’s just the way things go. The dynamic they had in high school, it’s not something they can get back and, in some cases, not something they want back but that doesn’t mean that what they’ve created outside the forced closeness is any less. They get their lives, they keep their pack, and isn’t that a little like getting your cake and eating it too? And the nights and days that Stiles loses himself inside Derek and Derek inside Stiles, he knows he’d never trade this time for that awkward confusing mash of emotions and hormones that was high school because he never would have gotten Derek to bend his strangely powerful moral code in order to make him see how well they fit together. Derek would’ve always held Stiles at arms distance, like he had done, admitting to Stiles in the dark of night, in fierce whispers against sweat-slick skin, the number of times he’d wanted to peel the jeans from his body with his teeth after slamming him against the locker, or his bedroom door, or whatever solid surface was closest and Stiles would keen out his agreement, not sure what he was agreeing to but if Derek would just continue with his voice and his hands and, fucking YES, his tongue then he’d be okay with whatever it was. And, I guess, at the end of it, that’s exactly what they and the rest of the pack were and would continue to be, okay.


End file.
